Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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I thank Deputy Catherine Murphy, whose place on this committee I am taking today. As someone who was born and lives in the docklands, I am very aware of relationships there. It must be acknowledged that there have been very fractious relationships between communities and the DDDA over the years, and these issues have not all been resolved satisfactorily for some of those communities, so there is still a lot of work to be done on that aspect. The south side learned from the north side, which was the pioneer, had all of the difficulties and did all the learning for the entire docklands area. The south side benefited from the mistakes and difficulties on the north side. The community voice, community work and, in particular, the voluntary effort must be acknowledged.

When I hear the term "developer-led", the alarm bells go off. There is no doubt about that. I was disappointed that we were back to that, from what we are hearing now about the SDZ. We are not learning the lessons from the past. These were lessons that were hard won by the communities and we are going back to them. It will be developer-led and driven, profit margins will be the god and communities will get lost in that. There is a real fear that this could happen.

The main issues are the loss of policies from the master plan and the amount of work that went into the master plan when now it can just be gone almost in a flash. The legacy issues of community gain, housing and the trusts are still major issues. I must come to a question or conclusion. How well were communities listened to in this consultation process, the conferences and the workshops that took place? Those issues can go forward with a very strong voice from this committee in the Dáil so that the issues that did not get a proper hearing or resolution can be dealt with and we can see a very progressive Bill going through. I do not think it is that progressive, because of the criticisms the witnesses made today. It is vital that this committee be a strong voice for those outstanding issues.